* Our last 3 wks' cumes  up to 10%: Business Head S Keerthivasan

NEW DELHI: Fever 104 FM seems to be pulling out all the stops in Kolkata with its promotions of Sourav Ganguly's ICC Cricket World Cup-centred audio blog Ki Bolchchen Dada in the cricket- and Dada-crazy city. (Click here for slide show of outdoor campaign)

Fever FM has set high store by this unique programming-cum-marketing initiative, which has Ganguly unwinding with fans and listeners as he regales them with anecdotes and secrets from his childhood-, school- and college days, and his cricketing career and personal life  As Ganguly spins his real-life stories, Kolkata is witnessing a high-decibel campaign capitalizing upon  Fever's exclusive access to the Prince of Kolkata during the biggest international cricketing fiesta, the ongoing ICC Cricket World Cup.

Fever's campaign has print ads in Bengali and English dailies – with Hindustan Times being  the only English daily --  and outdoors across key areas such as Garia, Barasat, Behala and Howrah. Wrapped trams a la  mobile hoardings, signage and branding at the airport, bus shelters, gantries, footover bridges and the metro stations, and announcements and calls-to-tune-in at high footfall places like malls and multiplexes, are cueing existing and prospective listeners to Dada's radio diary 

Justifying the need for the marketing blitz,   S Keerthivasan, Business Head, Fever 104 FM, said, Dada has a tremendous connect with the city, and with our outdoor prominence and heavy out-of-home visibility; we have taken this passion a step ahead. The Radio Diary is a first for the radio industry and the innovative splash outdoor is equally great....

Fever says it has spent as much as Rs 2 crore on the  Ki Bolchchen Dada marketing campaign. When asked if the programme and its sponsorship revenues could indeed afford such an astronomical promotional spend and its impact on the bottomline, Keerthivasan said, This promotion was done purely from a marketing stand point  We have big plans for the Kolkata market as we believe that we have a huge potential there and this was the first aggressive step in that direction. We did not plan the campaign basis sponsor revenues, and the sponsors that have come on board were incidental, so one should not be looking at the impact of this campaign on the bottomline but rather on more qualitative terms like the awareness that it has built for us in the city. And, in that regard, the campaign has done really well as our cumes have been on a constant rise for the last 3 weeks, and our share has gone up to 10%...

The campaign's spend proportion between the HT Group's own media verticals and outside brands was not available.

How strongly Fever's aggressive  marketing campaing will shore up its cumes in Kolkata remains to be seen. The mood at Fever is  totally upbeat.

It was a conscious decision to go with Sourav Ganguly - the son of soil and the biggest cricketing name in Kolkata,... Keerthivasan says, adding, Fever 104 FM has great plans for Kolkata. �Ki Bolchchen Dada' is certainly a big ticket activity for Kolkata. We have always been a leader in terms of its ideas and have endeavored to come up with engaging and fresh content for its listeners....